Wednesday, September 22, 2010

I Have a Deem

So tell me what you think of this. The always excellent Doctor Zero, writing at Hot Air, reports on a recent speech by the leader of the free world, who continues to emphasize how hard his job is, as he throws down a gauntlet at a straw man version of the Tea Party:

The problem long term are the problems that I talked about earlier. We’ve got — we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, two wars that weren’t paid for. We’ve got a population that’s getting older. We’re all demanding services, but our taxes have actually substantially gone down.

And so the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically what would you do. It’s not enough just to say, get control of spending. I think it’s important for you to say, I’m willing to cut veterans’ benefits, or I’m willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, or I’m willing to see these taxes go up.

What you can’t do — which is what I’ve been hearing a lot from the other side — is say we’re going to control government spending, we’re going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work.

It's always easy to win arguments when you control the terms of the debate, of course. And Doctor Zero quite rightly rejects the premise (emhasis in original):

Mr. President, let me make this very clear for you: our freedom is not contingent on telling you exactly what we plan to do with it. Trillion-dollar spending plans are not the only acceptable alternatives to trillion-dollar spending plans. Our Constitutional freedoms are not a primitive superstition you can dismiss with sneering insults.

Just so. DZ also suggests that some, ahem, radical surgery might be in order:

Controlling government spending will be difficult indeed. Step one is wiping out the Democrat Party, and replacing Barack Obama with a responsible chief executive. The President and his Party have made it very clear that this will be a necessary precondition of meaningful reform. The American spirit of individualism and limited government are wholly incompatible with their vision of the future… and since they haven’t been shy about imposing their vision through force, we would be foolish to leave them in a position of power.

The UK's tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

They're a little further down the primrose path in the UK, but the Obama administration is trying to catch up right now. To "deem" something is "come to think or judge." Is what the state deems paramount? If you accept the notion that we have to satisfy the programs and processes of the state first, then you should support the Democrats in this cycle and all others. A lot of people do. But I deem this sort of stance is why they are likely headed for a butt-whipping on November 2.